Chapter Eight
Catmint: A flowering herb in the mint family with fronds of highly aromatic violet flowers whose fresh, lemony scent inspires serenity
On my second day at the Oceanview Home, I look up from my work to see Jill hurrying down the steps toward me, her face drawn.
“We need to talk—” she says, but suddenly she smiles. She’s caught sight of Gully, who pads good-naturedly toward her, tail waving behind him.
“Well, look at you, you absolute giant,” Jill coos. She strokes his head and gazes adoringly into his big, brown eyes. “Gully, isn’t it? Hello, you sweet boy. Hello, Gully.”
After a few moments of petting, Jill remembers herself and straightens, clearing her throat. “Lucy. About yesterday…” She trails off again as she looks around the garden. For a moment, she seems at a loss for words. “It already looks so… different,” she says quietly, almost sorrowfully.
I tilt my head. “Is something wrong?”
“No… no.” She lifts her chin, her expression sharpening. “I understand that you met some of the residents yesterday.”
“Yes. Marjorie and Cynthia. And Mr. Fitz came out, too, a bit later.”
Jill looks surprised. “Fitz? Huh.” After a beat, she goes on. “Well, Marjorie put me in touch with her grandson, who is apparently a world-renowned restoration carpenter, whatever that is. He said he can take a look at the gates and advise us as to next steps. He’ll be here sometime this week.”
“That came together quickly,” I say. “I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised—Marjorie seemed determined to help.”
“She’s determined, that’s for sure,” Jill says dryly. “She’s also pushing to get tables and chairs placed on the terrace.”
Jill seems resistant to this idea, but I can’t imagine why. The terrace is a far more appealing place to take a meal than the home’s dreary, airless dining room.
“Marjorie and Cynthia seemed very happy to be outside,” I tell her. “They told me all about the gardens and how things used to be.”
Jill’s brow furrows. “Cynthia told you about the gardens?”
“It was Marjorie, really,” I concede. “Cynthia didn’t say much.”
Jill nods. “She’s become quieter, more withdrawn, recently.
But her friendship with someone as upbeat as Marjorie is good for her.
Even the routines of their friendship… the fact that they’ve known each other for so long.
Disrupting routine is very hard on people with cognitive decline.
” Her voice catches slightly on these last words and she looks away.
“It must be difficult to watch,” I say.
She gives a small, sad shrug. “There are days when Cynthia remembers everything and everyone. There are days when she’s anxious and forgetful.
On most days, she’s simply quiet, and on those days especially, Marjorie is a great comfort to her.
I understand from some of the staff that they’ve been friends for many years, since long before my time here.
Apparently they used to be quite mischievous.
Pulling pranks on the other residents, trying to set up members of the staff, things like that. ”
Her voice grows thoughtful, her thoughts meandering. “It’s very hard to get old,” she says quietly. “To have so little control of your health, of your own life. To feel alone. To watch your friends die, or move away. To feel that you are no longer yourself…”
I think of my father, who does not seem like himself without my mother. I think of Vikram Neel, the chef who is on a hunger strike because he can no longer bake, can no longer connect with the person he has been for most of his life.
“You’d like to protect them,” I say gently.
Jill’s dark eyes snap to meet mine. “How could I do that? I can hardly…” She presses her lips together, heat flaring on her cheeks.
“Anyway,” she goes on, “there isn’t any reason for you to know any of—for you to know any of them.
You have a job to do, and it has nothing to do with the residents. Just stay on task, Lucy.”
“Is that what you came out here to say?” I ask, startled. “That you don’t want me to interact with the residents?”
“Yes.” Then she adds, “And to tell you about the carpenter.” She shoots a brief look of softness in Gully’s direction before turning and marching up the steps to the terrace, her back rigid and her black hair starkly gleaming in the high afternoon sun.
I watch her go. What bit of information am I missing that would help me make sense of her perpetually shifting moods?
What possible reason could she have for not wanting me to speak with the residents?
The very thought of attempting to ignore Marjorie the next time she steps out onto the terrace and yoo-hoos down to me makes me smile.
She wouldn’t let me ignore her even if I wanted to.
Beyond the boxwoods that line the paths, among the thick tangles of weeds in the beds of the sunken garden, I breathe in hints of the flowers that have survived despite years of neglect.
Lavender, salvia, catmint, phlox, a variety of allium—they’re all hidden within the straggly green range of crabgrass and chickweed.
Some of the flowers surprise me. It’s a bit of an anachronism that Agatha Pike planted salvia in a formal garden.
Salvia’s silhouette is looser, wilder than the structured stems of lavender—it feels like a nod to California in a garden that otherwise would have had a refined, European sensibility.
Then again, it’s possible that Agatha never intended the salvia to be here.
Birds, or the wind, might have carried the flower’s seeds from a neighboring garden.
There is only so much planning one can do; nature will have her way.
I decide that I won’t remove the salvia when I find it.
I like it here, where its earthy, herbal fragrance acts as a foundation for the softer, rounder aroma of the lavender.
I glance up at the home and feel a thud of sadness when I think of its heavy silence. Will opening the grounds again be enough to lighten the spirit of this place… to dispel “The Gloom,” as Marjorie calls it?
I’m still paused, considering, when I sense the lemony, herbal scent of catmint begin to warm the air, rising above all of the other scents in the garden.
The aroma moves around me in that old, familiar way, glimmering and whispering against my skin.
If this scent were for anyone else, I would ignore it, just as I have for ten long years.
But I know this scent is for me, and me alone.
Curious, I lean toward one of the long, feathery stalks of violet blossoms. I close my eyes and breathe in its earthy fragrance.
The scent ripples over my skin and tumbles through me, deeper and deeper still. And then I am no longer among the flowers of the Oceanview Home.
I am in the art studio in the Bantom Bay Community Center.
I sit on a floor pillow, my feet tucked below me, a book—Matilda—in my small hands. But I’m not reading; I’m watching my mother teach her painting class.
I watch her move through the studio, whispering to one student and then another.
Everyone adores her; I can see it in their eyes, the hopeful way they glance at her, willing her to visit them next.
I hear my mother’s long skirt swishing as she walks, the plink of the gold bracelets on her wrist. Her dark hair is lustrous around her shoulders.
On a low table beside me, steam rises from her mug of tea and drapes around me—lemony and herbal and fresh.
“I can’t decide what to paint,” a woman tells my mother quietly, sounding embarrassed. “I’m not feeling inspired.”
“Just paint,” my mother tells her patiently. “Just enjoy the feeling of the brush in your hand, the paint sliding over the canvas. No inspiration. No expectations. You’ll never find what comes next if you don’t take the first step.”
And then my mother looks right at me, and I see the mischievous light in her eyes that I know so well, a shared secret between us.
“If you can’t find magic,” she says, her eyes on mine, “you must make it.”
I am in the garden of the Oceanview Home again.
I press my hand to my chest and feel my heart racing.
My vision blurs as I blink down at the purple catmint flowers, orienting myself.
My mother has been dead for six long, terrible months, but I feel like I was just with her again.
I lift my hand to my cheek and find my face is wet with tears.
Oh, to have seen her again! To have seen my mother!
To have heard her voice! I close my eyes and see her moving through the art studio, speaking to one student and then another, her encouragement shining like a light. She was so loved.
If you can’t find magic, you must make it.
I had not remembered that day. I had not remembered her saying those words to me.
Over and over again, I have heard my mother’s warning in my mind: Be careful with your gift, Lucy. Every action has a consequence. But I had never remembered this moment when she had looked at me, her gaze shining with playful mischief, and encouraged me to make magic.
I remember it now.
I blink up toward the home, so silent and solemn.
My mother’s words echo through my mind all morning long as I work my way through the garden, silver paths like wide, clean ribbons unspooling in my wake.
Why had I returned to that memory? What was it trying to tell me?